


this is a french house

by firstaudrina



Category: The Overnight (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5873551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing keeping their tenuous friendship going is that no one talks about The Night unless it is in the most veiled of terms. Repression is good, repression is familiar, repression is something Alex will happily return to like a warm blanket at the end of a cold night.</p>
<p>And it works just fine up until he kisses Kurt again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is a french house

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blairbending](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blairbending/gifts).



> Perhaps my most niche fic yet!

They still talk every now and then at the park, the kind of small talk all yuppie parents make: trading recipes and work anecdotes, restaurant recommendations and kid worries. Alex figures out Kurt and Charlotte's regular park days and he never takes R.J. those days unless Emily's with him. It's a stupid little thing, but he can't help it; he's not sure when he'll be ready to face them alone. 

But one day when he and Emily are standing with Kurt and Charlotte, watching their sons tussle over Kurt's homemade date and coconut balls ("Spheres?" Alex wonders. "Can't we call them spheres or something?"), they mention that R.J. is going to the Rosewood School nearby. Kurt and Charlotte react as one, widened eyes and shared glances. 

"Max goes there," Charlotte tells them, and everyone makes surprised faces, shares facts, gets reassured over what a good school it is.

Then Kurt says, "We could carpool."

It's Alex and Emily's turn to exchange uncertain looks. "I don't see why not," Alex says. 

 

 

When the car pulls up on Monday morning Alex isn't sure if it's going to be Charlotte or Kurt behind the wheel, but he's kind of hoping for Charlotte. She at least seems to possess embarrassment sensors most of the time, offering sheepish smiles and apologetic laughs when Kurt gets a little overly honest. Alex's life isn't that easy, though. Why would it be?

Kurt sits in the driver's seat, big flat-brimmed black hat on like a Hasidic hipster cowboy, with one elbow sticking way out of the open window. "Hey there buddy," he calls, and to R.J., "Hey, little man."

R.J. scrambles into the car eagerly, where he and Max immediately start on a lengthy dialogue with their action figures that seems to reference prior plotting Alex was not privy to. 

"Morning," Kurt says, too chipper by far for the early hour. "Got some matcha for you in that thermos there, not sure if you're a coffee man in the morning or not, but buddy – buddy, believe me when I say you _cannot_ beat the antioxidants. It's like doing a bump of cocaine. I'm kidding! And I'm sure you took care of ol' Richard Jeremiah back there, but just in case, I've got a backup –" As he makes the turn, he reaches over without looking to tap two small canvas bags sitting by Alex's feet. They're emblazoned with a logo of a bright blue water droplet cut through with a slash, on the other side of which are a dozen tiny water droplets. "We've got some homemade _hummus_ –" Which Kurt over-pronounces to the point of the word losing all meaning. "With carrot sticks to dip, of course. ALTs – that'd be avocado, lettuce, and tempeh wraps – god, the things you can do with tempeh these days, you'd never know it wasn't bacon. And a fruit salad for dessert – unsulfured and organic, of course."

Alex is not quite a morning person, except by necessity, and this takes him a minute. "Richard Jere– That is not his name."

Kurt gives him a quick, grinning glance that makes Alex's stomach turn over. "There's a breakfast burrito for Dad in the top one, too."

"What happened to good old fashioned bologna, huh?" Alex wonders wryly, thinking of the lunch he packed for his son: peanut butter and jelly, cheez doodles (that would be cheese-with-a-z), and some fruit leather as a nice nod to California. 

This is evidently the wrong thing to say, because the rest of the car trip is taken up with a monologue about the dangers of deli meats.

 

 

It goes like that for the whole first month of school, Kurt rolling up with something new and ridiculous to feed the kids. Mason jar salads, sweet potato quinoa burgers, spaghetti squash pad thai, rainbow spring rolls, zoodles and meatless meatballs – "Or should I say meat _spheres_ , am I right?" Kurt jokes, reaching over to clasp Alex on the leg, rather high up on his thigh for not even eight a.m.

"What in God's name are _zoodles_?" Alex asks.

Kurt gives him a pitying look. 

It's giving Alex a complex, so he starts making double lunches too, but doing it on the sly, slipping them into R.J.'s backpack secretly with one labeled for him and the other for Max. Normal lunches in brown bags, wholesome but with just a little bit of junk food, just a couple of treats. Sandwiches. Potato chips. Rice Krispie squares. Store-bought chocolate chip cookies. He tries really hard not to think about sending two little boys to school every single day with four lunches between them.

Then one night R.J. requests zoodles for dinner and Alex knows he is fighting a losing battle. 

"What in God's name are _zoodles_?" Emily asks.

The look Alex gives her contains enough pity for the both of them.

 

 

Friendship settles into something akin to normalcy. Emily and Charlotte sign up for some yoga class on Sunday mornings. They do kids-friendly couples brunches. There is the aforementioned carpooling. Once in a while they even revisit pizza night, though Alex and Emily always leave early. Kurt gives them a painting as a token of this new leaf they've all turned over. It's nice. Ish.

Emily says, "I am not putting a painting of a butthole above the couch. I don't even know where you would hang a painting of a butthole."

"Proctologist's office?" Alex suggests, tilting his head sideways to look at said painting, but mostly he agrees. "I think this is one of the self-portraits." 

Emily tilts her head the opposite way. "Is it kitschy ironic or tacky ironic to put it in the bathroom?"

"The question philosophers have been asking for generations," Alex replies.

 

 

"I like that you shaved it," Kurt says out of the blue just after the kids have ambled out of the car. His expression is guileless, honest. He reaches out and just brushes his fingers over Alex's chin, scritching just a little over the stubble there. "I can see your face."

Alex doesn't respond only because his heart has racketed up from baseline to just-ran-a-marathon. Kurt must interpret this as discomfort, because he adds, "Sorry. I know that's not exactly above board, totally appropriate behavior."

Alex is still just staring, aware that it's rude but unable to get the thought out of his head that it would not be above board, totally appropriate behavior to drag Kurt into the backseat of a car in broad daylight in front of their kids' school.

It would also be bad to do this as a married man having something of a sexual renaissance with his wife in the wake of giving another man half a handjob one time.

"Oh, no, it's cool," Alex says belatedly. "Thank you."

Kurt smiles. 

 

 

The only thing keeping their tenuous friendship going is that no one talks about The Night unless it is in the most veiled of terms. (Sometimes in bed he can nudge Emily into dirty talking about Kurt's huge dick, which is just…another thing entirely that doesn't warrant discussion, no siree.) Repression is good, repression is familiar, repression is something Alex will happily return to like a warm blanket at the end of a cold night.

And it works just fine up until he kisses Kurt again.

They're having a guys' night, whatever that means – when he told Emily, she looked at him askance, and he wasn't sure how to reassure her that by _guys' night_ he didn't mean _making out with guys night_. Except apparently he did mean that.

They're at some bar that Kurt knows. It has a back garden with benches made up of artfully scuffed wooden slats, little tea lights on every table, and drooping branches heavy with flowers sneaking over the wooden fence. It's beautiful, it's cool, and it looks an awful lot like the kind of place you'd pick for a first date. "Have a seat," Kurt says. "I'll get you a beer."

Craft beer, of course.

"I'm glad things are good for us now," Kurt says. Today he's wearing a deep V-neck t-shirt with at least three necklaces and a cardigan made out of some super thin fabric that clings to him. "I was really worried – and not just for me! Max really is discerning; that wasn't a line. He doesn't like most people. And all of Charlotte's friends and family are still in France, so I think she feels really alone here. I'm happy we can all be friends, and even though I don't regret anything that happened, sometimes I worry that maybe I messed it up, bringing sex into it – it was just when I saw you, you know, in the park? Man. I just had this _moment_ , I know I made a total idiot of myself inviting you guys over, I thought I was being such a fuckwit, I just knew I had to do it. I saw you there and it wasn't just that you guys looked so – so how do I put it? Wholesome? Like the kind of couple anyone would want to be. It was _you_ , you know? Cute and awkward and not really sure of yourself, like the new kid on the playground, which I guess is you were – I couldn't help myself, I had to –"

Alex remembers Charlotte saying sometimes the only way to shut Kurt up is to kiss him. So that's what he does. 

It's one thing to kiss someone drunk and stoned after a night of skinny dipping and secret sharing, when it's almost six in the morning and you've been up for twenty-four hours _Jesus_ , that's like not even knowing what you're doing. That's like pure id instinct. Alex has only had one sip of beer so far, he hasn't smoked pot since That Night, and the closest he's come to water was his shower before he left the house. He is well rested and fully in control of his faculties. And yet when he kisses Kurt it feels exactly like it had the first time, startling and sudden and perfect. Exactly what he wants to be doing.

"Shit," Kurt says when they pull apart.

Alex takes a deep breath. "You're telling me."

 

 

"I just thought…" Emily says, but she doesn't finish. 

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No, come on, what is it?"

"I just thought that it was…enough, whatever it was, that you were over it, that we had – had fully _expanded_. I mean, hasn't it been good since?"

It has been good since. They're not as afraid to share things with each other. After you've faced the biggest fears of your marriage head-on, what is there to be scared of?

"I don't know if it's about that, necessarily," Alex hedges. 

"Is it me?" Emily puts a hand on her chest. "Is it something about me, that you feel like you can open up with Kurt and Charlotte in a way you… can't with me?"

"No, I – that's not –" Alex shakes his head a little and pulls her over, puts his arms around her and feels her smush against his chest. It does sometimes feel easier to talk to Kurt and Charlotte only because he doesn't know them as well, or because of the weird way their relationship got started. Maybe it's just the French house. But any way you look at it, that's not what this is about. "I think I'm just finding a new…part of myself that I didn't want to deal with before."

"Oh god," Emily says. "This feels like the intro of some self-help book. What To Do When Your Husband Realizes He's Bisexual."

"This isn't about that." Alex nervously clears his throat. "Come on, are we supposed to stop growing as people just because we got married when we were twenty-five? Isn't there a whole world out there to experience?"

Emily gives him a look that mixes suspicion and uncertainty, but she says, "So this is a thing we're doing, huh?"

"If you want to."

She gives him a wry little smile and leans up to kiss him half on his mouth. "I think it's already happening, hon."

 

 

Emily waits until Sunday morning when Charlotte is unrolling her yoga mat beside her to say, "So our husbands are dating."

Charlotte lets out a loud, bright laugh that attracts the attention of everyone in the studio for a moment. "Kurt hasn't been so excited in ages. Every day is Christmas to him, I think."

Emily studies her, Charlotte's smile that is always a touch too wide and her eyes that are always slightly sad. "How about for you?"

Emily likes Charlotte but she feels a little intimidated around her too, with her effortlessly tousled hair and sex in the south of France and handjobs in massage parlors. Emily will never stop thinking Charlotte and Kurt seem perfect for each other, the platonic ideal of the Sexy Exciting Couple; when they talk about how they got together, they talk of the kind of courtship Emily has only experienced in the most tasteful of arthouse sex films, about as far removed from her reality of dorm flirtations, carrying books to class, _puke and rally_ as one could get. Emily still can't really wrap her brain around the dysfunction in their relationship. 

"Kurt says he wants me to be happy too," Charlotte tells her. "I just have to figure out…how to be."

Emily and Charlotte start hanging out on the nights the guys are together, both unwilling to left behind as lonely babysitters. Once Max and R.J. are asleep they climb up into Charlotte's absurdly comfortable bed with a sleeve of Oreos between them, put a movie on in the background, and complain. God, it feels good to complain.

"Kurt is sometimes so embarrassing," Charlotte admits. "Always talking, talking, talking. He gets all these new projects and then has to tell every person he meets every single detail, he can never tell when they are getting bored." 

"Alex _whines_ ," Emily says. "Sometimes I don’t know who's worse, him or our six year old. It's like, I'm not everyone's mommy."

Charlotte gives her a pleased little smile. "It feels good to say, doesn't it?"

It shouldn't. Emily shouldn't like bitching about her husband, airing every little grievance. She should feel satisfied, completely and totally. 

But she supposes that goes out the window when your husband is out on a date with someone else.

Later, after a glass of wine each, their heads sinking into goosefeather pillows, Charlotte notes, "You made a face, before."

"Did I?"

"Mm." Charlotte nods, observing her. "You don't have to feel guilty. It helps to talk." She makes a face of her own, silly, her tongue out and eyes rolling up. "I learned that in _therapy_." 

Emily smiles. "I don't know. I have everything I want, I should be… I shouldn't need to do this."

"Everything?" Disbelieving, but not unkind.

"Well…yes. I love my husband and my baby and my job, I have a great house – I don't have room to complain."

Charlotte eases onto her back, expression thoughtful. "Yes. To be grateful is good, of course. But to say this – it ignores that people change. That a need being met one day can be unsatisfied the next just because of something that has changed in us, inexplicably, for no reason. We aren't able to just be plugged in and charged up. It takes more than this." She tips her face back in Emily's direction. "I used to hate sleeping alone. Now I hate if someone sleeps beside me." Her lips lift at little at one corner. "Tell me a secret of yours."

Emily can't keep from looking directly in her eyes, an almost marbled green. "I like masturbating more than any other kind of sex thing," she tells her. "Like, more than Alex going down on me. It's my favorite thing."

Charlotte laughs. "Good! That's good." Her expression turns a little mischievous. "Maybe one day you'll show me."

Emily feels a flush from her temples to her collarbones. It's not unpleasant. "Maybe I will."

 

 

Sometimes Alex feels like Charlotte is sort of strange around him. It's not like they aren't in weird, unchartered territory already, but it's this kind of winking familiarity that makes him feel like he's starring in a play with her but forgot all his lines. She'll slide her arm into his, rub her hand over his back, and make all these little jokes as though they're both in some secret club together. People Who Have Messed Around With Kurt's Dick; meetings are every Tuesday, she's the president, Alex is the treasurer. 

The dick thing is, incidentally, something Alex is still figuring out.

There was some talk originally of taking it slow but that kind of went out the window about fifteen minutes into their second solo outing. Kurt did that little knowing grin he did sometimes (" _Just kidding!_ ") and Alex just felt helpless. So they fumbled around in the backseat of Kurt's car like teenagers, except they had to squeeze between car seats and there was a toy truck digging into Alex's back the entire time. The whole thing was kind of artless and absurd but the cork was out of the bottle, so there was really no turning back. 

But things are progressing perhaps a little bit faster than Alex is prepared for.

"Put your finger in my butt."

"…Right in there?"

"Yes."

"In your butt?"

" _Yes_ , Alexander, please put three to four of your fingers in my butt."

" _Three to four?_ "

At first Alex tried really hard to determine which part of it was a suppressed thirst for dick and which part of it was Kurt, specifically and solely Kurt, who always pauses to reassure him with utmost sincerity, who has sixteen different hobbies and forty-five different hats. Alex wanted to break it down like algebra: _x_ over _100_ is equal to the exact percentage of his sexuality he's been keeping under wraps this whole time. 

"I don't think there's an equation for it," Kurt tells him with an indulgent smile. His hair is swooping over one eye rather attractively and his oversized eyebrows draw together as he gives Alex his full focus. "It's just a feeling."

"Yeah, well, how long have you had the feeling?"

"Always," Kurt says. "But sometimes I didn't realize, and sometimes I had other feelings that took precedence."

"It seems exhausting to be this relaxed about everything."

That makes Kurt laugh, head tipping back. 

 

 

When they leave the boys with the boys, Charlotte drags Emily out. "Good riddance!" Charlotte shouts. 

"I have to say, this swinging thing is really useful for childcare options," Emily says.

Emily hasn't gone out like this since she was eighteen years old, fresh out of her parents' house and going a little wild at college. She never thought she would miss it – getting stupid drunk in a short skirt with another girl laughing into the shell of her ear, but as it turns out she missed it so much their first night out together makes her breathless. 

They go to clubs and dive bars. They go to roller derby, they go to strip clubs, Charlotte gets on stage somewhere for an amateur burlesque night. They go on a midnight cemetery tour once, jumping at shadows and cackling like witches. They load up on candy and go to a drive-in movie, but they talk through the whole thing and are completely, hilariously lost by the end. They go to the Museum of Death but Charlotte has a panic attack so they end up on the sidewalk outside, Charlotte slow breathing while Emily offers joke after joke until Charlotte finally laughs. 

Charlotte has a new boyfriend for a while (Marcel) and then a new new boyfriend (Alejandro) and then a third boyfriend (who remembers names at this point?) and then a girlfriend and then another, until it seems like she's just juggling a harem of them. Sometimes they tag along on nights out or nights in, and they get along fine with everyone, but there is a kind of cagey jealousy amongst the four of them when it comes to outsiders. It's ridiculous, but there it is.

One night Charlotte's second girlfriend Issie and first boyfriend Marcel both come along to this shitty bar next to a gas station where they drink margaritas and eat dollar tacos. Emily ends the night sitting in Marcel's lap, goes home with him, and then comes back the next morning feeling – 

Feeling.

"Have fun?" Alex asks, yawning into his coffee. His hair is sticking up in the back just like R.J.'s does and Emily feels like her heart could burst she loves him so much.

"Yeah," she says, tiptoeing up to kiss his cheek. "Yeah, I really did."

 

 

Charlotte has started letting Emily sleep in her girls-only bedroom on the nights they stay in The French House and when Emily asks about how much she enjoys sleeping alone, Charlotte only waves a hand. "I don't mean that about you. I like being with you." 

Emily might like it best when it's just her and Charlotte and the Oreos in that big bed.

"You're lovely, you know, Emily," Charlotte says, and Emily loves the way her name sounds in that accent, _Em-ih-lee_. "I know you were sort of thrown together with me but I'm glad about it."

Emily doesn't even know what to say to that, shaking her head and pushing up to sitting, cookie crumbs under her hands. "Char, no. It's not like that at all, it's –" And it's something she realizes as she says it. "You're my best friend."

She hasn't had a best friend besides Alex in so long.

Charlotte's face lights up, but shyly, and all Emily can do in response is kiss her. She kisses Charlotte until she smiles and then kisses her until smiles are forgotten in favor of gasps. She remembers promising to _show_ Charlotte once, but this is more of a _share_ , hand slipping between Charlotte's thighs, lips tracing the curve of Charlotte's breasts. Which are pretty amazing up close and personal.

They tell their husbands at breakfast, very quietly, with Max and R.J. in the next room watching cartoons.

"Oh," Alex says, pink. 

"That's –" Kurt starts, considering. "Good for you!"

"How was it?" Alex wonders, and Kurt thwacks him a little, but Charlotte starts laughing and it seems easy, natural, perfect. 

 

 

They start experimenting more after that. 

More than they were already, that is. 

Alex says, "It's okay to be curious. And honestly, it's worth the hype –" Which leads to him and Char taking the kids to the zoo so Emily can fuck her husband's boyfriend, a preplanned date that leaves her with a nervous stomach and prickling skin. 

She remembers everything Charlotte said and wonders aloud, "Will you even be able to –" But then realizes that might be crazy rude and zips it. Kurt, of course, only laughs.

"Get it up?" he supplies. "Emilia, you are a beautiful person. Between your problem solving and my creative thinking, I'm sure we can figure something out."

A jump cut montage of sex shop paraphernalia runs through Emily's head automatically: comically large dildos, strap-ons with extra hardware, handcuffs, blindfolds, breast pump porn. It makes her start laughing hard enough that she snorts wine through her nose, and Kurt smiles, brings a napkin up to dab at her face. It's tender and thoughtful and somehow makes Emily feel immediately at ease with whatever is going to happen. 

It's good – not mindblowing, but good, though Emily admittedly does get a little carried away. Kurt is packing heat, and out of everyone she's been with (because by now there have been enough to call it an _everyone_ ) he's the biggest, which is something of an experience; her nails leave scores down his chest that he spends the rest of the night bragging about.

Alex and Charlotte happen with Emily there, holding court and feeling a little smug about being everyone's favorite. Alex is fumbling and embarrassed like he's woken up inside a wet dream and doesn't know how to handle it. But Charlotte, as Emily has found, is too calm and kind to be nervous around for long; her hands are too gentle, her smiles too real. That night ranks among the best of Emily's entire life, up there with her and Alex's first date, the night R.J. was born, and that time she went to a Pearl Jam concert when she was seventeen and Eddie Vedder looked right at her.

Not putting herself into impossible positions and teeny tiny boxes has made Emily feel freer than ever, and she realizes after all is said and done that she doesn't really need to ever sleep with Kurt again. She's been wondering how much she needs to sleep with Alex anymore, too. It's not that she doesn't like it or doesn't want to – she loves him, she loves being close to him, loves going to sleep with her head on his chest. It's just the expectation is gone. She could fuck him every day if she wanted or she could never fuck him again and it would be fine either way. She can do whatever she wants. 

Lately she feels like Alex's roommate, like college before they hooked up, back when they were just beer buddies who would sit in the last row of their intro to cinema classic cracking jokes about everything. And she likes that, honestly. He's still her farm boy; nothing can change that.

Maybe it's okay for him to have a farm boy of his own and her to have a farm girl, or a milkmaid, or whatever. The metaphor has kind of gotten away from Emily. 

Maybe there really aren't any rules. 

 

 

"I fucking love this. I fucking love you. I fucking love fucking you."

"Thank you, Alex."

"It's so good. It's so fucking good."

"I agree."

"Tell me I have a big dick. Tell me –"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Kurt says, right in the middle of it, right from where he's under Alex, like they're having a chat over the dinner table. He puts his hands on Alex's shoulder's to pause him, different from how he does it to urge Alex on, which involves hands wrapping around Alex's back, fingers digging into shoulders. "What is that about?"

"Am I saying 'fucking' too much?"

"No, no, that's great, love that. I was talking more about the dick business."

"Oh." Alex blinks and then mentally rewinds, because he didn't even realize he'd said that. "Right. Okay."

"I'm not averse to saying what you need to get off, except anything obviously offensive, I'm sure you can remember our talk about limits and –"

"Kurt."

"Right. All I mean is…I thought we were sort of past the whole dick thing?"

"We are, we are, it's not – it's like a habit, I guess. You don't have to say it."

"It's not saying it. It's, you know, the principle of the thing."

"…The principle of the thing."

"You know, we had the talk, you took off your pants, you love your dick."

"I do, I do, I know –"

"Because you know I love your dick. And Emily does. And Charlotte does."

" _Yes_ , thank you, Kurt, I know there is a My Dick Just As It Is fanclub."

"So I'm not gonna say it."

" _Okay_."

"Are you mad that I brought it up?"

"Kurt."

"Okay, okay, okay. Let's do this." He pauses. "I love your dick, just as it is."

Alex laughs, dropping his head and pressing his face into Kurt's neck. " _Okay_."

 

 

The thing that Alex likes best is when Kurt cups the base of his skull to pull him into a hug or down into a kiss, or just so Kurt can murmur some nonsense in his ear that probably doesn't even need to be made so intimate, so secret. Kurt does it because he's short, maybe, which Alex also likes; the weirdest thing is that Kurt is so short but he feels so all encompassing. Kurt does it with the dumbest things, like just to say, "You look great today, man, you know?" or "By the way, I love you," and it feels suddenly of utmost importance, it gives Alex butterflies.

Alex always used to be skittish when it came to guys like Kurt: guys that were open and friendly, quick to compliment and casually handsy. They intimidated him because he couldn't do that, he didn't have it in him to be that comfortable in his own skin, or that skilled at pretending he was comfortable in his own skin. But now he likes it. He likes the way Kurt gestures big, hands gesticulating and arms sweeping wide. He likes how Kurt makes eye contact too intently, and how he always touches Alex, reassuring and unthinking. 

Kurt is the opposite of everything Alex thought he'd ever want, and isn't that straight out of a stupid romantic comedy?

 

 

Things come to a head when Kurt and Charlotte announce that they're getting divorced. They break the news to Alex and Emily over dinner out at Primitivo as though they're children who need to be assured very gently that this is not their fault. The room is dim but made intimate by candlelight and soft conversation. Alex and Emily are agape.

"But things are going to so well!" Emily says. "We've all been so happy!"

"They are," Charlotte agrees earnestly. "We are."

"Nothing has to change," Kurt promises. He has one arm low around Charlotte's waist. "We're still going to live together. We still want to be with you guys. But marriage, that's –" They exchange a look. "That's not where we are anymore."

"It's because things have been so good that we're finally able to accept it," Charlotte says. "We are the best of friends, but not husband and wife, not anymore."

Alex and Emily drift around in a daze for a few days after, unsure as to what they're supposed to do now. Nothing is supposed to change and, indeed, nothing does as Kurt and Charlotte go through with the paperwork. They still live together, they still take care of Max, Charlotte still kisses Kurt when he talks too much. But whatever tenuous ties were holding them together officially are gone.

It starts to make Emily feel prickly. At best, she and Alex have lazy sex once or twice every couple weeks, but is that what makes a marriage? They have all their meals together. She turns the coffee on first thing in the morning for him. They complain about bills and plan how to redecorate. They laugh over stupid movies and fall asleep cuddling on the couch. Kurt and Charlotte had all of that too, but for them it didn't equal a marriage. 

"Do you think…" Emily struggles to articulate herself. "Are we supposed to…"

Alex's lips lift a little at one corner, half a smirk, but his eyes are certain, maybe sad – she can't tell, and that seems critical, somehow. She should be able to tell. "You know," he starts, "That first night, the very first night, Kurt told me –" Emily moves to interrupt but Alex holds her off with a lifted hand. "He told me that you and I were going to grow old together, ninety years old sitting on a porch together. And Em – I still want that. When I think about my future, that's what I see. You and me: wrinkles, porch, maybe one of those small fluffy old people dogs."

Emily's eyes are a little wet and she smiles. "I want that too."

"I don't want to get divorced," Alex says. "I don't know if marriage is just a social construct and it doesn't mean anything or it means whatever we want, I don't know. But I still want to be married to you."

"I want that too," she says again. "I want that too."

She moves forward to slide her arms around his waist, to tuck her face into his neck that smells warm and familiar and Alex-y. 

 

 

They rearrange, they settle again. Kurt and Emily take up rock climbing, which makes Alex and Charlotte nervous, but they put up with it. Kurt tries to teach Alex to paint but he is not, as it turns out, good at it. Eventually Alex is informed of The Porn Empire that funds the life to which they are all rapidly becoming accustomed, and he needs to go away for an hour to come to terms with that. Emily comes up with marketing tips.

Charlotte bakes with Max and R.J. She teaches them how to make martinis, to Emily and Alex's absolute horror. Emily streamlines the homework process so that there is no more shouting Spanish across dining room tables while sons run in circles. Max throws a temper tantrum one night in response and she has to break it to Kurt and Charlotte that he might need to be grounded; after some mandated room time, Max emerges shy and sorry. She and Alex try not to be too smug about it, but they mostly fail. 

Emily also has some notes on the occasional necessity of gummy worms.

It get to the point where R.J. asks them to put him to bed "like Kurt does" and Max won't do his math homework without Alex and Charlotte is best at playing pretend and Emily explains things the easiest. 

"I think I'm going to write a book," Kurt says thoughtfully. "On unconventional parenting." 

"What are you going to call it?" Emily wonders, checking vocabulary homework, before she adds sarcastically, "'It Takes a Village'?" 

Kurt laughs so long and so loud at that that they all start laughing, and then he says, "Well, I am _now_."


End file.
